Science & Health
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‘Feedback Loop’ in Central East Asia Threatens Disturbing Changes to Mongolia’s Climate
A review of weather patterns in inner East Asia over the past 260 years suggests the region is currently caught in a dangerous cycle of heatwaves and droughts that could forever reshape the area, and possibly turn the Mongolian Plateau into an arid wasteland.
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What Ever Happened to the Vaping Lung Disease?
In the summer of 2019, months before the word “coronavirus” meant anything to most people, a mysterious respiratory illness began popping up around the U.S., ultimately sending over 2,700 primarily young and healthy people to the hospital and dozens to an early grave. The culprit wasn’t an infectious disease, but a poison; THC vaping devices…
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Is This Trippy Cave Painting the Result of a Hallucination — or Something Way More Obvious?
There’s a cave in California, roughly an hour’s drive from Santa Barbara, whose ceiling features a prominent pinwheel-like drawing. Fascinating new research suggests this painting is not some drug-induced abstraction, but a literal representation of the very thing that makes psychedelic trips possible.
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‘A Magically Surreal Symbol of Human Ingenuity’: Scientists Reflect on Arecibo’s Doomed Big Dish
The big dish at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is on the verge of collapse, leaving officials with no choice but to retire the famous radio telescope. Astronomers around the world are now having to face a grim reality: that this dutiful dish — in service for the past 57 years — is no…